Just so. Then an atheist mystic exists, after all.
To see things as they are, and not as we wish they were.

Most people are not content to be as they are.
They desire to seem as they are not. In fact, they often work quite hard at it. In some cases, what is not becomes what is.

Aikido is about becoming, however, not being. To imagine what is not is the soul of creativity. In application, Aiki cannot be limited to what is, since properly applied Aiki technique will change what begins as highly negative, and neutralize or even convert it to positive. Aiki is an act of spontaneous imagination within a form, like a metered poem. Creative Art happens in every encounter. Wide variations in nonetheless effective technique attest this.

So seeing things as they are is good, but creativity requires more.
In my experience, effective Aiki requires more. Certainly, it requires more of me.